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Yeah, I watch trees and birds. Any sort of botanical stuff
attracts me, and birds and trees go together, sort of like a horse &
carriage – can't have one without the other. Only this morning, while
wandering through the crisp,sunny, tree-lined streets of the better end of
Holt (Armstrong Crescent to be exact) I peered into the body of a relatively
low-growing Red stringybark Eucalyptus macroryncha
and heard the strident cry of a Striated Pardalote It was perched,
swiveling this way & that ,on nearby roof guttering then, taking me to be a
latter day St. Francis, lofted across and stopped in the stringybark right
above my head for a moment before returning to the guttering and peeking
beneath the tiles, a harbinger of spring and a bounty of baby padalotes, I
hope.
Next, I had close-up views of a foraging Weebill. Good, most Weebies I see
are in the high foliage and the prurient little pests won't remain still.
A pair of raucous Red Wattlebirds sundered my serenity and
sent the Weewilliam packing but a pair of Gang Gang
Cockatoos, standing still as stone, 2.5m from my nose, turned nary a
feather. I hadn't noticed them at first. Second time I've seen them in Holt.
Other time was in the late 1970s when I looked skywards in response to what I
thought was Bob Dillon executing elocution exercises and saw a pair rocking
along on high.
John Layton.
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